Inventory management is the process of physical verification of items and stocks in a warehouse. Every item in a warehouse needs to be verified and the position of the items need to be recorded so that any item can be identified. Currently, the process of inventory management is being carried out manually and along with a database management system in which the status along with the location of the box in the warehouse is updated manually. Visual identifiers such as but not limited to a barcode can be used in the inventory management process, but even in that case, extensive manual work is required, especially in warehouses that houses huge stock of inventory. In such a case, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be used for making the inventory management process efficient.
The inventors here have recognized several technical problems with such conventional systems, as explained below. The existing approaches in which size of boxes in a warehouse are fixed, location of the boxes and barcodes are known, scanning multiple boxes using the UAV is comparatively an easier process. However, warehouses in which boxes are of different sizes, scanning becomes difficult. Further, when multiple boxes are stacked, only the boxes in the front row are visible, and visual marker of other boxes may partially or fully invisible due to occlusion. As a result, the UAV is unable to read data encoded in the marker. As data that helps in navigation may be encoded in the marker, along with other information, occlusion affects navigation of the UAV.